An EnTHRALLing Day

 Let me introduce you to our official mascot: Gaston.  Gaston is the ultimate hobby dog.  He loves all people, and when friends come over to game he sits on a chair and watches intently.  He also curls up next to me while I paint and provides much appreciated company.  Most importantly, Gaston is always ready to go outside and play for a necessary stretch break.  Today Gaston and I had a pretty good day!

No, his tongue doesn't always hang out... sometimes he tucks it up in his lip!

This morning, Jeremy was playing in his Dreadball league finals over at the San Marcos Brewery and Grill.  Like any respectable brewery, they are dog friendly, so Supreme Overlord Gaston commanded we go there to root his Uncle Jeremy on!  It was a pretty nice place and they set aside their whole patio for the tournament which meant Gaston got to wander around and explore.  I went without the alcohol but my santa fe chicken sandwich was very good and I definitely got my money's worth with my 10+ Diet Coke refills.

Dreadball is a pretty cool game.  I would probably play it if I was not so into the historical aspect of gaming right now (of course that doesn't stop Jere from trying).  It's basically a futuristic, violent, version of basketball.  His Space Turtles walked into the tourney in first place but a rule change put him at a severe disadvantage.  Unfortunately, Jere was not victorious but it still was fun watching a couple of his games.

Jere getting serious.

The Space Turtles (I don't remember their real name) in action against bugs.

Game two was against Rats.

After Gaston had thoroughly explored the patio and outside grounds he was ready to head home.  We said goodbye to the brave combatants and journeyed back to Gaston's lair.  First, played outside for awhile and then to my chagrin the Grand Master demanded we take a nap.  (No picture provided :P )  After a delicious dinner of BBQ chicken pizza and kibble, Mr. Gaston was down for the night and I decided to finish up my current batch of Viking thralls.

To tired to even move to his "painting" chair.

I was very ready to finish this set of thralls.  I almost finished them a few days ago but my hands wouldn't cooperate.  Since then I have given them a little work each day, but never spent enough time to just knock them out.  I did have all the basecoats and touch ups finished, so today it really just came down to layering the washes.  After a little time they were done but not without some hiccups.  Let me share some mistakes I made so you don't have to:

• Be very careful about similar looking and labeled washes.  The army painter bottles all look exactly the same and the Dark and Strong tone have very similar tints which led me to washing some hands with the wrong color.  It wasn't a big deal after a flesh highlight but I think I'm going to write a place on my pallet in sharpie for shade.
• Yes, washing is easy but to quote the immortal Han Solo: "Don't get cocky!"  I hit a couple places with the Dark or Strong tone too fast, and while usually washes will blend well, I went way to far past recesses separating the different areas of the model.  This sloppiness led to some necessary touchups, slowing me down :(
• Don't forget the highlights!  Even though my levy/thralls were supposed to be dingy and dirty I still gave the washed flesh and hair a light highlight and the difference was night and day.  It's amazing how much one little extra step can add to your final product.

All that said here are some pictures.  All of them are pre-highlight save the final.

The one good thing about having an abundance of pill bottles:  pill bottles and blue tack are amazing for painting!

If you look closely at the left eye you can see one of the scars I carved to add "character"

This thrall is a nice example of of the three different Army Painter shades working together.  Dark for the hat, Soft for the jerkin, and Strong for the pants/ sleeves.

The six latest additions to my warband!

As I was leaving the Dreadball tourney, Jeremy asked if I was going to go home and finish my levy.  When I answered yes one of the players stated, "Nobody plays levy, they don't give you a Saga die."  I don't have a ton of Saga experience but I found this statement to be quite naive.  While it is true that levy do not provide you a saga die, you should be getting your max 6 dice from the rest of your warband.  Levy DO provide you with 12 meat shields for just one point to protect the rest of your army from shooting, charges, whatever.  More importantly to me, Viking levy (thralls) are the only unit in my warband with ranged weapons.  I believe this will be extremely significant in the upcoming SAGAugust tournament.  Since Crescent and Cross is the newest rules release I believe a lot of people will play its new warbands, which means lots of cavalry.  Since cavalry has -1 armor against ranged attacks, those generals would be very foolish to ignore 6 arrow attacks a turn from my thralls.  Maybe I should not have just wrote that... who am I kidding, no one reads this anyway!

THE SHIELDMAIDENS COMETH!

So yesterday I received my much anticipated package from Annie/Bad Squiddo Games/ The Dice Bag lady!  Annie runs a really cool business that includes selling a line of "realistic" female miniatures, aka women dressed as they would have been for combat or the time period, and not in some fantasy outfit.  She has a huge selection at http://thedicebaglady.net/female-miniatures/ but I was lucky enough to spot her post on the "Saga: The Dark Age skirmish game" Facebook page advertising the shieldmaidens she gets specially made.  Once I saw them I had to immediately order them, because everyone has to admit that one of the coolest parts of the Vikings TV show is Lagertha and the the other shieldmaidens kicking ass and taking names!

Unfortunately, yesterday I was feeling pretty poor, so it was with much anticipation I opened them today!  Of course, Annie did a wonderful job carefully packaging them.  Despite being plastic miniatures, they were still wrapped in bubble wrap, which gave me something fun to pop while I wrote this...

Pretty fun to get a package shipped by Royal Mail.

All the info for the famous Dice Bag Lady.

Here they are!

 Each shieldmaiden is individually packaged with three other pieces: their weapon, shield, and a base.  The poses are fantastic and while the four feel uniform enough to use as a single unit, they are all quite distinctive.  Cleanup of the models is a breeze.  There is a little flash to scrap away but none of those hated mold lines.  This made me quite happy because I truly have an unnatural hate for mold lines and have spent hours filing them away off my other models.  I was also pleased to see that the minis were not made to fit into a slotted base as I planned to place them on my ultra thin magnetic 20mm squares.  I am not assembling them today but here are pictures of the "bodies" of the figures.

The individual packages are nice for fast assembly.

Borghild: The newest to the shield maiden line and also my favorite.

Hervor has a very "warlord" pose.

Freydis is posed to fit front and center in the shield-wall.

The famous Lagertha.  The sculpting on the face is so nice that my camera picked it up with facial recognition!

On her website Annie writes, "Don't get duped into thinking they can only be special character or warlords, why not slot them in with your regular troops?"  While it's tempting to run a warband led by Lager... I mean Earl Ingstad, I decided to take Annie's advice.  I think the shieldmaidens will look fantastic mixed in with my other hearthguard, and should definitely help my Viking warband stand out from all the others.  Of course my painting skills would never do these fantastic models justice, so I was able to bribe my friend Danny to paint them for me.  Overall, I would definitely recommend these miniatures, and based on her excellent customer service, the Dice Bag Lady's other products.  The set of four shieldmaidens was quite reasonably priced and only cost about $23 including shipping from the UK.  I would normally try to end with something semi-humorous, but instead I'll spare you and close with this terrific picture of all four of the shieldmaidens painted up that Annie shared today on Facebook.

Painted by Paul Cubbin

Ancient Orators Tended to Babylon...

A long time ago, in a land far far away... I loved history.  All eras, all civilizations, I loved it.  As a kid it was always my favorite subject, and while most kids in my elementary school were checking out Where's Waldo books from the library, I was reading books on the Crusades, or the Civil War, or Ancient Rome, or Samurai... the list goes on and on...  I loved museums, about anything really. I still remember my high school AP U.S. History class with Ms. Mulhern being one of the best classes I have ever taken. (And I got a 5!) In college, after a brief stint in the business school I switched to a history major with a business minor, and it was one of the best decisions I ever made. Dr. Warren, Dr. Carter, and Dr. Petrie stood out as incredible professors and made me feel like I was actually getting something from my education, enriching myself.

Occasionally there was too much enriching...

However, somewhere along the way history and I broke up.  Of course it wasn't history's fault, I was shitty to her.  I neglected her. I was too busy with other things.  I forgot how good she had been too me.  I don't know if it's because my graduate school had so much reading, or my job had so much reading, or life had so much reading... but reading for fun had become a chore.  And intellectual television made my head hurt.  Overtime, I guess life got in the way and history and I just grew apart.

I think that is one of the reasons I am currently so taken with Saga.  As soon as I started thinking about how I was going to compose my Viking force something just exploded inside my head.  My passion for  history just flooded back.  All of a sudden I was reading again, and not just blogs (although there was plenty of that) but I was reading peer-reviewed articles like I used to.  I actually went to the store and bought books!  At first I was just consumed in research about Vikings.  In college my concentrations were Asian and Latin American history, because that's what the three amazing professors named above taught.  Thus, anything deeper than the bare bones of Viking culture was new and wonderful to me.  Then I expanded through the Dark Ages to the Crusades, and basically to the other factions covered in Saga.  And from there it has expanded to pretty much anything.  I am in love with history again and it feels goooooood!

One of my favorite activities has been going through my cable guide a week at a time and DVRing everything (I mean everything) history related that interests me.  I then put the documentaries on while I paint, browse the internet, write in this blog, whatever.  It just feels so enriching (there's that word again) to absorb while I am doing other things to help myself.  I have found a few gems so far, and it will probably be useful to me (and maybe you as well) to document what I have been watching/ reading. So for now on, whenever I post I will make it a point to comment on what I am watching at the time, and also share any new articles or books I have found particularly entertaining.  Might as well start now.

This post's documentary: Barbarians II "The Franks" on H2; 3 out of 5 stars.  It was enjoyable and was decently made but didn't have anything that knocked my socks off.

And here is a cool history mystery (I crack myself up) courtesy of Albert:
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/swords-inscription-800-year-old-mystery-180956147/?utm_source=facebook.com&no-ist

History has now become one of my lights in this dark time.  It's kinda sad that I had lost an important part of me, but I am fortunate that I was able to find it again.  So I guess in closing I would say sometimes we forget the things that make us the happiest, but they never go away, they are just waiting to be found again.  And, when in doubt, always end with a sweet pun:

When the Levy Breaks

I've finished most of my Viking army and the only thing I have left to paint are my levy.  In Saga, levy is the term for your warband's weakest troops.  They represent untrained fighters: peasants, or in the vikings' case, thralls aka slaves.  Levy do not generate any Saga dice for your army, have less attacks, and lower armor.  However, you do get 12 models of levy for just 1 point which makes them a great meat shield.  In the Viking faction they are also the only unit able to take a range weapon, and ranged weapons have a bonus against cavalry armor.  So, I knew 12 bow levy would be a great addition to my army.  The next question was what models to use.

One of the things I really enjoy about Saga is that you can use any 28mm historical miniature in your warband.  You just have to stay with the historical theme and follow WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get).  Jere wanted some levy in case he wanted to run his Jomsvikings as true Vikings so we agreed on splitting a box of plastics as that would provide us both enough models for one unit.  I found the Wargames Factory Viking Bondi on eBay for $17 shipped, and we were in business.

The Wargames Factory Bondi were good because they would match the rest of my army, but were unarmored.  However, 20/20 hindsight I am not sure I would use the models again.  Unfortunately, I ordered all mine before seeing Danny's fantastic Gripping Beast plastics.  Granted, they were about half the cost ($17 vs. $35) but after putting so much time and effort into my army I really wish I had some better miniatures.  Here is a pros and cons list for using Wargames Factory over Gripping Beast off the top of my head:

• Pros
• Inexpensive ($17 for 32 models)
• Very customizable
• Bodies seem properly proportioned
• Have bows (Gripping beast has slings for their range weapon, YUK)
• Steel rimmed shields (For hearthguard)
• Ton of left over bits
• Cons
• Not a lot of detail on clothes, face, beards, anywhere
• Poor casting leads to loss of what little detail you have
• Heads have a large neck and lump on the end meaning you have to cut them and fill neck gaps with greenstuff
• All shields are steel rimmed (warriors wouldn't have this)
• Weapons are very thin, look less imposing, and are prone to breaking
• All non-shield hands are open with a "thumbs up"

Still, the Wargames Factory minis were great for me to get back into painting.  If you are on a tight budget I definitely recommend them, but if you can squeeze the extra couple of bucks to upgrade I would.  They did, however, serve their purpose of getting me into Saga for as cheap as possible!

Assembly was a pain, as predicted.  The arms, heads, and weapons all come separate and need to be glued together.  One of the problems I found was getting the correct arms (you get a ton) to give you the pose you are looking for.  I also hated cutting and fitting the heads.  Never less, I was able to complete them and make them look half decent.  Since one of the purposes of these guys was to experiment I tried out GWs Liquid Greenstuff as a small/ hard to reach gap filler.  I had heard mixed reviews but found it worked great for gap filling and had the added bonus of wiping away from areas you don't want it.  I think the trick is you have to layer it, but you don't even need to wait for it to dry to do so.  I also mixed in some of the Saxon heads Corey gave to me to make my thralls look like a hodgepodge and also differentiate them from my warriors.

After spending a ton of time painting my warriors and hearthguard (champions), I was not too keen on spending forever painting my twelve levy/thralls.  Luckily, my friend Danny is a very quick (and good) painter and he showed me how he sometimes uses washes to color his basecoat for a quick paint job.  Since I wanted my thralls to wear browns and grays this seemed like a good time to try the technique out.  I bought Army Painter Skeleton Bone spray and used it to base coat the models.  Unfortunately, we've been unusually humid for San Diego and the coat was a little grainy, but I was able to smooth it out with the Army Painter perfect match bottle.  I then proceeded to paint on the base colors.

Primed model (Almost, I forgot to take the pic until I had painted the bow and hair)

Base coat colors

You will notice I base coated very very little.  That is because I was going to test my Army Painter Soft, Strong, and Dark Tone Quickshades.

Yes, I'm a little bit of an Army Painter fanboy... Sounds like a future article ;)

I was very curious to see what colors I could get with the washes.  The benefit of using the washes to color is it will allow me to paint a lot faster and also be way more forgiving for my shakiness.  This proved to be very true as I finished the model extremely fast and in one sitting.  I didn't even have to stop when my hand went through some bad twitching.  I decided to wash the hat with the Dark Tone, the jerkin with the Strong tone, and the pants/ sleeves with the Soft Tone.  This would give me a good idea of how the three different shades would look.  Each area got two coats.  All the base coated colors were also washed with Strong Tone.  Here is the final product:

Nicknamed "Cletus the slack jawed Saxon" By Jeremy

You may notice that the mold had more detail on the jerkin's back than front

Overall, I am quite pleased.  He isn't the quality I would want for my warriors or hearthguard, but the dirty earthtones will do quite well for my thrall bow force.  I plan to do the rest of my levy like this, mixing up which colors I use where.  It looks like I will be on track for SagAugust, the big Saga day they are having in San Diego that requires a fully painted force.  Hopefully my levy can stick some arrows into all the cavalry I will be facing!

My Saga

I recently started a new game that has been extremely beneficial in helping me find my "zen" during the course of my treatment.  The game is called Saga (https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/101865/saga) and is a semi-historical game whose first edition takes places in the Dark Ages and second edition during the Crusades.  My friend Jeremy has been playing and praising this game for about a year now, but I stumbled into it through a trade.  I had been looking to move my Doomtown core set and my buddy Corey was looking to get into it.  To trade he had this:

This was not exactly an even trade for my Doomtown core and 1st expansion, but I didn't care because 1) it was Corey and 2) my Doomtown was collecting dust.  We met at my local game store, swapped (Corey was nice enough to throw in all the extra Saxon bits he had) and I was on my way into the world of Saga.

If you are familiar with Saga at all, you may notice that these are not the official miniatures.  Their official ones are made by Gripping Beast and feature a fantastic line of metals and plastics.  These Wargames Factory mini's are also famous... for being cheap (in both price and quality, haha)  It mattered not, I had decided that I was going to paint these miniatures myself, so I was convinced my paint job would be worse than the miniatures anyway...

Over the past few years, my motor skills have deteriorated as I have been sick.  My hands have become shaky and sometimes just twitch like they have a mind of their own.  This has led to a severe lack of confidence and desire to paint, and I would usually pay or get a generous friend to paint my stuff.  However, I used to really enjoy painting.  In fact, when I was in high school my only real connection to the hobby was painting or creating scenery.  I had plenty of gaming stuff, but did not know anyone other than my brother or girlfriend at the time to actually play with.  I really didn't know how to find a gaming group, and was sadly too shy to ask.  It's a shame really, because I know I would have enjoyed it, and it would have been good for me... but to quote my friend Dustin, c'est la vie!

My friends Albert, Danny, and Jeremy recently helped me repaint and light my Star Wars: Armada Ships (That will be a whole different post this one is already getting to long...) and it was as if something had awakened in me.  Suddenly, I felt the desire... no the need to paint again!  I don't know if it was learning from them, sharing techniques, or the little bit of work I did myself but the "creative bug" was back!  Now that I was armed with a box of miniatures, it was time to get to work on my Viking army!

Purpose

This blog is to chronicle my life as I use gaming and other hobbies to aid my path to recovery.  I am writing this for me, to help my memory and help my soul.  So, I will write it as I talk, not worry about grammar, not worry about entertaining.  If anyone even reads this, let alone enjoys it, then bonus (joe, heh)!  So, if you read this disclaimer and do decide to continue on, let me be the first to say: